Why the Supreme Court’s abortion pill ruling might not end legal fight
If justices rule that the anti-abortion doctors who filed the lawsuit don’t have standing to sue, three conservative states could step into their place.

By Ann E. Marimow and Caroline Kitchener
June 4, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

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When the Supreme Court debated this spring whether to limit access to a widely used abortion medication, a majority of justices seemed inclined to rule against the lawsuit by finding that the antiabortion doctors behind it had no legal basis to bring the case.

That was the position of the Biden administration, whose lawyer pressed the justices to get rid of the challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of mifepristone, first approved by the agency more than 20 years ago. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the antiabortion doctors are not directly harmed by regulations that have made it possible to ship the drug to patients’ homes and use them later in pregnancy. She urged the justices to “say so and put an end to this case.”

But a Supreme Court ruling along those lines, which could come as soon as Thursday and must land by the end of the court term in late June or early July, is unlikely to end the legal fight over access to the drug that is used in more than six in 10 of all U.S. abortions. ... That’s because the justices could leave an opening for three states – Missouri, Kansas and Idaho, each of which has a Republican attorney general – to try to quickly revive the challenge to abortion pills, which have moved to the forefront of the battle over reproductive rights in the two years since the high court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade.

The anticipated push by the states to take over where the antiabortion doctors left off would open a new round of litigation, keeping the controversial issue before the courts for another year or more and creating fresh uncertainty about access to the drug in a presidential election year where abortion is a central topic. Democrats are eager to draw attention to conservative attacks on mifepristone and other matters relative to reproductive health, hoping the subject will galvanize abortion-rights voters in November.

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By Ann Marimow
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2005, and has spent a decade writing about legal affairs and the federal judiciary. She previously covered state government and politics in California, New Hampshire and Maryland. Twitter https://twitter.com/amarimow

By Caroline Kitchener
Caroline Kitchener is a reporter covering abortion at The Washington Post. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Twitter https://twitter.com/CAKitchener